Comm 2322

What did you learn?This course wasn’t what I expected it to be. I thought wow this will have some really cool interacting points and be fun but it was kind of a let down. The course was very plain and bland. After taking the course your suppose to be able to pull away how to tell a story with the use of multimedia but I’m not sure if I could do that. The course did teach some very basic and helpful stuff like how to identify the elements in a multimedia story and how to sketch a concept for a story. I think if I were to redo the course it would be a lot more beneficial to me.

2. What surprised you?

While I don’t want to sound harsh I don’t think I could say anything really surprised me. The course wasn’t tons
of new information just pretty generic things that I have always heard when dealing with storytelling. When they did begin
talking about how to make a storyboard I did find that to be a bit useful. I was a bit surprised to find after all of the bland
boring reading there was an interaction part. You get to identify what part of media is being used or even the tools. It made
it a lot more fun and barbel. I guess that is just the kid within me trying to find any kind of fun I can in a reading assignment.

3. What do you want to know more about?

I think to get to know more about editing for the web would be very helpful. I think this would be something that could benefit
me greatly.The web will be the future of everything so learning how to edit for it could only benefit me more.

Writing news releases are always very important. You want to make sure all the information you provide is factual and relevant. Your work also always needs to be on time. A news release is to get information out about your company. You can send these to company by email, snail mail, or even fax. You need to make sure your format for your news release is always correct. You need to put an embargo date so the company knows when your information should be released.

Here are 10 tips to make sure your news releases are in tip top shape:

Your story must be newsworthy.

Your audience needs to know why it’s important for them and why they need to read it.

Start with a brief description, then go on into more details.

Ask yourself the question of, “How will this help people?”

The first 10 words in your news release are the most important.

Avoid excessive adjectives and fancy terms.

Talk about the facts.

Provide all of the contact info you can, you can never have to much.

Make sure you wait until there is enough substance for a story.

Make it easy for media representatives to do their jobs.

Also remember to write the news release in third person. Give as much information as possible. Make sure you stay super detailed. I remember writing my first news release I thought it was going to be super boring but I found it to be a lot of fun. I’m still trying to find a lot of ways to improve my skills for writing news releases. If you have any information on how to better my skills for writing news releases I would greatly appreciate them!

In times of crisis you must not freak out. Whenever a crisis strikes people think with their emotions and not their heads. You have got to keep people calm because they are looking for your reaction.In class we talked about a few differnet points involving crisis. In class we learned that there are 4 different type of Crises, they are:

Meteor

Predator

Breakdown

Lingering

While there are many different factors that contribute to the start of a crises. Some different ways a crisis can begin include environmental problems, technological mishaps, terrorist acts, criminal misconduct, managerial issues, and finally accidents. Also something else very important that Crystal Davis told us in class was to NEVER say terrorism. Once that word is used than everything will get taken out of context. Being in PR people are holding onto every word you say and they will try to find some way to reword it and make it a hundred times worse.

You need to always remember to plan. Without a good plan any public statement released will go horrible. Some benefits of planning include:

It reduces stress

It will demonstrate goodwill

You have a better flow of information

And is has more of a business continuity

Also whenever you have a product that is somewhat good to your selected audience someone will always hate it. People will always try to bad mouth a product. If you are working to keep a name for you company or product good you need to have a good overview on what people are saying about your product. You can do twitter and Google searches daily on your product. Something else that is newer are Google Alerts. When you set up a Google Alert you can see when people are searching or write about your product.

I started off listening to Marketing over coffee. I cant really tell you why I was drawn to listen to this podcast vs. the others but it might of been their graphic. They had a very simple graphic of a cup of coffee but it also looks like the Dunkin Donuts logo. They had different podcasts to choose from and they all seemed to have interesting titles. They also only record once a week but you can tell that they really enjoy what they are doing. I started with listening to their Podcast called, “Licensed To Podcast”.

He brought up a funny point saying he hates when people do audio photography or cooking shows via podcast but you cant see anything. You need to be able to relate to your source so make it good for the viewer. Also with some students you must continually change topics to keep them interested. He said he never had a format for his shows because he needed to be able to switch up topics fast for the college students. Podcasting works because usually it fits what the listener wants to hear.

I got a little bored so I continued to search their Podcasts and began listening to, “Night of Living Twitter Coach”. They began talking about new Apple products that have been released and also talked about how WalMart released a new app. They continued talking about Groupon and different social media websites.

Another point that talked about was that Myspace is trying to redo their website that it will only be formatted for 18-30 year olds and that their are still 20 million users on the site. Who knew Myspace was still going strong?

These were very interesting! You should check them out and support their weekly Podcast.

Recently in Shanghai China they decided to see how fast they could build a fifteen story hotel. It took them six days to build the outside of the hotel. Something also crazy about the build is that its able to with stand a level 9 earthquake. How would you feel about staying in a 15-story-hotel knowing it was built in 6 days? I don’t think I could do it.